


Character Study: Jehan

by TheBraveHobbit



Series: Taut [10]
Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Gen, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-14
Updated: 2013-07-14
Packaged: 2017-12-20 03:39:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/882503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBraveHobbit/pseuds/TheBraveHobbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Modern!AU Jehan Prouvaire: Historian, Gardener, Peacemaker</p>
            </blockquote>





	Character Study: Jehan

**Author's Note:**

> Part of my sandbox-style Modern!AU: Taut  
> Additional content can be found on my tumblr: elfjolras.tumblr.com

**Modern!AU Jehan Prouvaire: Historian, Gardener, Peacemaker**

 

> _“Where did that even come from?”_   
>  _“I don’t know what you mean.”_   
>  _“You know exactly what I mean—I thought you were this timid little thing!”_   
>  _“Oh please. Someone has to have warned you about watching the quiet ones. Pass me an ice pack.”_

Everything is mixed up. Peacemakers have to take self-defense classes and the rebels read poems. Honest people have the most to fear, gentle folk wage war and the old heroes have all sat back to watch the world alight. Governments mute the people instead of upholding them. That strikes Jehan as typical, though she knows others find it strange. It’s the same pattern history has always followed, though, in and out of flux as regimes change faces but not policies. Those patterns are why she studies history, and she’d be happy to tell you about the ins and outs of social justice and the steps forward and backward that humanity has taken as its leaders rise and fall. It’s only fair to know, however, that once you get her started you may never be able to silence her. Topics so dear to her heart cannot be hemmed, and they bubble and burst as her enthusiasm builds.

Jehan was three when someone first tried to explain the difference between girls and boys to her. She was six when she tried to soften the sound of her name by including an “h” in the midst of it. She was seven when she definitively knew that she was not a boy and tried to explain this to her parents. She was eight when her father went to prison.

Her mother moved them to Paris the year her father left, hoping to allow them the chance to start over. Jehan thinks about her father often. He has tried to reconnect with her on more than one occasion, looking for his long lost son. That’s how she got into the habit of moving; after her father’s release, she’d never had a permanent address for more than a year before she began living with Bahorel (and if asked she would still say that it’s his apartment, not hers, not  _theirs_ ).

Maybe the transience of her childhood is the source of Jehan’s fascination with beginnings that follow endings. Grantaire gets caught up in the idea that nothing good can possibly last, and Jehan wholeheartedly agrees with him. Unlike her dearest friend, however, Jehan revels in that knowledge. Things are sweeter when they’re finite. Joys are brighter when they’re mortal. Nothing lasts, neither happiness nor sorrow, and that truth is where beauty lies. Jehan can’t get that idea out of her mind. The impermanence of life strikes her as unavoidable, but she does not believe that impermanence is a sign of futility.

Life is worth living. It’s worth trying. Mistakes are worth making. History is worth learning, even if- _especially if_ -it’s doomed to be repeated.


End file.
